Paris Dispatch

Only in Paris can you spot a tall, slim African man in red Royal Stuart tartan Bermuda shorts with impeccable red knee socks, pushing one child in a turquoise pram, with his daughter skipping alongside him wearing a kilt in the same tartan skipping alongside him. This is Paris, where style permeates even the smallest of things, like a toothpick that looks like a thin stalk of bamboo with an elegant twisted loop, in a club sandwich at Hôtel Le Bristol’s bar. One night, I dined at La Société, the Christian Liaigre–designed restaurant that Alex Denis and Jean-Louis Costes opened last year on the Left Bank, around the corner from the famous Café de Flore and Les Deux Magots. To me it’s part luxury liner SS Normandie dining room, part modern art gallery, with a Carrara marble champagne bar designed by Sophie Lafont, photographs by Peter Lindbergh, and a clay-and-black enamel sculpture by Gérard Traquandi that resembles a huge slab of Japanese driftwood. Carefully arranged on the windowsill are works by Peter Beard and Pièces d’identité, by Bernard-Henri Lévy, who just moved to Hôtel Raphael with his wife, Arielle Dombasle. My companions were Alex Denis and Tiffin Schwarzkopf, who was waiting to be reunited with her one-year-old son, Xavier, in New York. François Pinault was there, in the rear of the dining room. Bruno Frisoni heard my booming voice and turned around to say hello. Ariel de Ravenel, with her new cropped coiffure, sat opposite my table with Robert Burke. Pamela Golbin, curator in chief at the Musée de la Mode et du Textile, in a beautiful Jean Paul Gaultier sailor top in white and red paillettes, offered my table dessert. (I selected bittersweet chocolate sorbet, while Schwarzkopf opted for fresh raspberries and strawberries with cream.) The only thing missing was Sony, Denis’s chien de Bordeaux, who usually greets guests at L’Avenue, the Right Bank fashionista restaurant, original sister to La Société. “It’s absolutely the most elegant restaurant in Paris,” said Lee Radziwill, wearing her new Céline gabardine pants, the color of French clay with racy black satin tuxedo stripes and waistband, with a cashmere Halston sweater. She told me this the next day as we met to talk about Cy Twombly’s permanent ceiling, Aile Sully, installed in the gallery of bronze antiques at Le Louvre. The Virginia-born artist started his sketches for the ceiling—made possible by the Wolfson Foundation—in honor of founder Janet Wolfson de Botton’s late husband, Gilbert, in 2006. Huge circular shapes that could be shields or planets are set against a bold blue background, and the names of classical Greek sculptors—Praxtieles, Scopas, and Phidias, among others—are written in Greek. Les Arts Décoratifs always always has outstanding exhibitions, including its current “Les Lalanne,” which runs until July 4. “Astonish me!” Jean Cocteau once demanded. And this show truly did. I found myself in an Alice in Wonderland–like world of pieces by the husband-and-wife sculptors François-Xavier and Claude Lalanne in bronze, copper, and sometimes fabric, such as the famous sheep ottomans that Yves Saint Laurent had in his all-white library on Rue de Babylone. The first thing that greets you is a giant lapin with wings in bronze. Then come families of miniature elephants, bathing themselves with water spouting from their trunks, in a tablescape for a dining room. Turn and you go berserk for the coffre-fort hidden in the stomach of a monkey almost six feet tall. There’s a working fireplace in the shape of a gorilla. (I remember São Schlumberger had a Lalanne bar in the shape of a fish.) There are gorgeous bronze sofas with curved backs in the shapes of crocodiles, as well as sofas in the form of Bactrian camels, a leather rhino that Jane Holzer had commissioned as a sofa that could be folded up or extended, and a room with vitrines holding beautiful Lalanne jewelry. A gorgeous coffee-table book (Flammarion) gives great insights into the workings of Les Lalanne, who could turn white marble into a marvelous dove chair, another piece I saw at YSL’s and Pierre Bergé’s home. Just across this show’s entrance is one of the most comprehensive exhibits of modern fashion I have experienced, Golbin’s “Histoire idéale de la mode contemporaine, vol. I: 1970–1980” (on view until October 10). YSL is practically considered a national hero since his death two years ago, and he has the most installations in the show. What makes it so vivid is the accompanying video montages of runway presentations in each diorama. My first YSL couture show was his famous Broadway collection (as John Fairchild called it) from 1978. I remember Yves telling me how he had never seen Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, based in the American South, but his boldly printed, fluid chiffon shawls, contrast satin blouses with soft sashes at the neck and waist, and lacquered straw canotiers (boaters) worn dramatically askew reminded me of ladies going to church in Orange County, North Carolina, where I grew up. Each designer’s installation—Issey Miyake, Kenzo, Grès, Popy Moreni, Claude Montana, Ter et Bantine (designed by Chantal Thomass), Sybilla, Cacharel, and Chloé by Karl Lagerfeld—has video clips, which makes it more powerful. You can see Karl’s first collection for Chanel from January 1983—I remember attending in a white fleece Perry Ellis tennis coat that I resurrected three years ago for another Chanel show at the Crystal Palace. You have the superglam blue duchesse-satin Thierry Mugler evening gown (1984) that had its own violet wings attached, inspired by the Victoire de Samothrace in the Louvre. In Mugler’s work, you see the inspiration for a young Alexander McQueen in his first couture show for Givenchy in 1997. Azzedine Alaïa has a video in which Grace Jones plays a vendeuse to a client, advising her on how to flirt and land a rich husband—without necessarily being in love. The most beautiful honeycomb-colored crocodile coat is shown in the clip, not to mention classic white trouser suits and even a cameo by the designer, with his fidgeting dog, Patte-a-Pouf, stuffed in a shoulder pouch. One of the last things I did on my unexpected extended stay was drive to the Russian orthodox cemetery outside of the city in Sainte-Geneviève-de-Bois, where Rudolf Nureyev, who died in 1993, is buried. In the late-afternoon light, the tombstone—designed by Ezio Frigerio—has the look of a richly patterned and boldly hued Russian blanket inspired by one of Nureyev’s favorite rugs. Even the folds and fringe surrounds on the black marble make it seem as if it were a tapestry generously embroidered in mosaic. Just one more example of the intense details that can be found all around in Paris.